Stefan Constantinescu from RingNokia tried the Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s recently unveiled DT-22 Tripod and have shared his thoughts in this short video. The DT-22 is certainly one of the very-nice-to-have accessories for Nokia N93 owners. Enjoy the video.

Zi Corporation, a leading provider of intelligent interface solutions, recently announced the introduction of QixLinks and QixLinks Ads, two radical new developments of its on-device search and discovery engine Qix. These products will offer users direct access to portal content and advertisements, driving greater ARPU for operators.

QixLinks and QixLinks Ads are targeted to deliver the top 1,000 high-value mobile content and advertising keywords to users. Qix offers the ability to showcase select operator content and hand-off to standard mobile search vendors for accessing other content. QixLinks enables discovery and repeated use by including natural language words a user might think to enter to find content.

During the 3GSM, Zi Corporation also introduced the new version of Qix for Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile powered devices.

Nokia PR:

Nokia (NYSE: NOK), the world leader in mobile communications, and Elisa announced today that they will carry out a pilot of Nokia’s new N-Gage mobile gaming service. The pilot will start in February 2007 and run until mid 2007.

"The core of the Nokia games strategy is to make it easy for people to find, buy and play great quality mobile games and we’re excited to expand our relationship with Elisa to help make this possible," said Jaakko Kaidesoja, Director, Games, Multimedia, Nokia. "This pilot will help us further refine the N-Gage experience for our commercial launch later this year."

"Our goal is to give our customers a new and unique experience they cannot get anywhere else," said Mikko Mattinen, Head of Department, Consumer Customers Products, Content services, Elisa Corporation.
"People who enjoy mobile games are often the same customers who enjoy experimenting with new mobile services and content. Elisa can provide a wide range of content and services to meet their needs."

Elisa will combine its existing mobile gaming platform with the Nokia N-Gage gaming platform and carry out intensive testing and evaluation in a live network environment. Nokia and Elisa will work together to bring a superior mobile gaming experience for Elisa customers. Nokia device owners can look forward to improved game quality, outstanding performance and an intuitive way to get games.   

With the scheduled launch in mid 2007, Nokia’s next generation mobile gaming platform makes it easy for people to find, buy, play and share rich and immersive games on a range of Nokia devices. Elisa intends to support the launch with a full service offering through its own portals in addition to the N-Gage application installed on Nokia devices.

No more cartridges! All the games will be streamed to your phone. I like that.

GDC is less than a week away. We’re going to be inundated with press releases and coverage. Are any of your guys going? I think Paul is.

Can’t wait.

(photo from Darla Mack)

I am a T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) customer. I love them. Unlimited GPRS for $5.99 a month rules.

This recent news however makes me want to see the resignation of people in corporate management effective immediately:

Testing some T-Mobile phones recently, I once again ran into T-Mobile’s annoying policy of banning third-party applications from accessing the Internet on their phones. Like so many infringements on our liberties, this started stealthily with a few devices but now covers their entire product line.

This means T-Mobile feature phone users are prohibited from surfing the Web with Opera Mini, checking maps on Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Local for Mobile, listening to podcasts with Mobilcast, and using any other form of software not pre-approved by T-Mobile.

T-Mobile cites meaningless "security" concerns as reasons for attempting to severely cripple the mobile software development industry, but their hypocrisy is painfully clear when you remember that these apps work fine on T-Mobile’s network, using T-Mobile SIM cards, if you buy your phone directly from a manufacturer like NokiaUSA.com.

This idiotic policy doesn’t even work in T-Mobile’s interests. Third party software encourages people to use data services, which encourages them to sign up for data plans, which makes T-Mobile money. A more liberal policy on mobile apps also might help the nation’s #4 carrier win customers away from control freaks like Verizon (NYSE: VZ), with their strictly limited set of applications.

T-Mobile’s motto is "get more." So it’s painfully ironic that nowadays, they let you "get less" — locking out much of what their phones can do in a pointless, incomprehensible attempt at control. My solution: instead of buying phones through T-Mobile, go direct to manufacturers or through independent retailers that offer non-T-Mobile-branded GSM phones, then drop your T-Mobile SIM card in. (It’ll work fine.) That way you’ll get your T-Mobile service, and much, much "more."

Phone Boy is absolutely right! There is a meme happening right now! Users are revolting!

How thick headed do you have to be to lock people out of using data? o_0

After all if your customers want to use data, get this: they’ll want a data plan! That means revenue last time I checked. What happens when they learn all they have to do to get around your little crippled devices is to buy unlocked retail units?

In other news: Sprint, the last operator I would think of as innovative, announced an all you can eat plan:

Sprint (NYSE: S) is about to test run its new all-access plans on its customers living in the SF area. First up is the Unlimited Access Pack which gives you unlimited voice, messaging, and mobile Web for $120/month—not bad if you’re a heavy smartphone user who’s been going over your monthly plan. An additional plan adds Internet access for your home PC for a total of $150/month. No word on whether these plans will become permanent or whether they’ll be rolled out elsewhere, so it all depends on how the SF crowd embraces them.

Sure it may be in San Francisco only but it is the start of something huge. Damn you Sprint, I wish you were GSM!

I usually don’t like writing about operators but lately I’ve just had such a blood lust. They are the sole reason my fellow man doesn’t have the latest and greatest Europe and Japan have to offer.

It is time Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Sony or Samsung started a campaign informing consumers about freedom.

"Let the SIM set you free." Who wants to make some t-shirts?

A question that often gets asked is: "Will my Nokia (NYSE: NOK) ABCD be upgradeable to S60v3 Feature Pack 1 or 2?"

We’ve been told numerous times: no, no and NO.

Financially it makes sense. A few engineers would have to spend their time to make sure a new OS would work on an old phone. Why would Nokia spend money and not expect anything in return?

T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) Dash (HTC Excalibur) owners recently got the good news that they will be able to upgrade to Windows Mobile 2006. Pricing hasn’t been announced. I wouldn’t be surprised to see customers being charged a fee, but that’s just speculation on my part.

People who buy prebuilt computers don’t expect Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) to mail them a DVD every time a new version of their OS is released. Most people buy a new computer when it is time to upgrade, but there are a few who like their machine enough to go out and purchase that new Vista DVD. Apply this similar purchasing model to different versions of S60 on our mobile. Most of us will buy new phones that have the latest version of S60 on it. What about people who don’t want a new phone? Why can’t Nokia sell upgrades to those people?

I spoke with Darla Mack recently and I point blank asked her: Would you pay for S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 for you current phone? The answer was a definite yes. I know it’s something I would do too.

Let’s play with some numbers. Imagine Nokia sold 1,000,000 N73’s. One percent of those users are extremely hard core. They love their phone more than their significant other.

1% of 1,000,000 is 10,000. These 10,000 customers pay $30 to get the latest version of S60. That’s $300,000. Money that can be poured back in to research and development.

I’m not a developer. I wouldn’t know how difficult it would be to make S60v3FP2 work on my E61 or everyone else’s N73. If a Nokia developer could let the community know it would be greatly appreciated.

What do you guys think?

Can we get something similar from Nokia?

It’s much more practical than the E90, yet more spacious than the E61i.

Think it’s just the same old N91 with more capacity? Think again.

Lots of screen shots, immense amounts of detail: Check out the complete review over at Mobile Review

Some snippets:

For this article we got our hands on the N91 8 Gb’s commercial version, meant for retailing, in other words the very final edition of the smartphone and I do hope that after this review’s release date, no further updates to the software will be made.

The most important, craved-for and hyped update – support for A2DP.

And those currently having the original N91, just like me, will have to face the dilemma – to switch or not to switch. Let’s look at what benefits the new version brings along:

• 8 Gb instead of 4
• A2DP.
• Enhanced gallery and sound recorder (can be achieved via third-party applications).
• Subjectively speaking, the device feels better built, but on one of the snaps you can see that the coating on the back cover locker has come off. On my intensively used N91 the paint is still on.

As you see, the advantages are few, and on top of that some of them are minor. As regards the A2DP, it is more of a toy rather than a vital feature – if the battery was more capacious, then we would have no problems listening to tunes wirelessly, without having to check battery status every five minutes. Hard drive capacity – a big change, but do you really need that much? Personally, I listen to every new 4 Gb of music about 2-3 weeks before I get all-round new library. Overall, the choice is up to you, and as for me, I am waiting for the next fashion music-heavy solution by Nokia (NYSE: NOK), and if there won’t be any, well, I will be down to buy the N91 8 Gb. Regrettably, in a color that I really don’t like.

I personally think this phone looks awful. That’s just my opinion.

Maybe Nokia should get the guy who designed the 8800 to design a music phone?

As soon as you read the first paragraph, you know it’s going to be good:

You want to buy a car, so what do you do?

Would you do the following?

Go to the nearest fuel station and agree to buy all your fuel from them for two years. Also agree to pay a hefty monthly fee to cover the cost of the fuel and car. You pay for fuel every month even if you don’t use any, plus extra charges if you use more than the agreement states. In return, the fuel station supplies you with any car from their very limited range, all of which have been altered to reject fuel from any other supplier.

I wrote something very similar a few months ago:

When you go car shopping do you go to your local gas station? When you want to buy a television do you call DirecTV? Do you buy light bulbs from your local electric company?

Then why are you buying a cell phone from a carrier?

She breaks down her argument in to 8 myths many people have about locked devices. You can feel her anger! I definitely share the same emotions on the subject:

1. You have to buy a phone from a network operator, it won’t work otherwise
2. Phones are too expensive to buy at retail, you have to buy it with an operator’s subsidy
3. Phones from network operators are cheap or free
4. The operators optimise the phone to work best on the network
5. You can unlock the phone if you really want to, so locking really makes no difference
6. The phone network operators give people on contracts great package deals which they couldn’t get otherwise
7. Phones need phone network operators, that’s why they have unusual pricing arrangements
8. Operators who receive a steady income from contracts and locked phones are able to provide better services

A very compelling read that I suggest anyone, especially Americans, read.

It’s not a news that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) bets heavily on the mobile gaming. This time its the complete NGage platform instead of a single device. And now, we’ve found a new patent from the Finish giant that should improve the way of playing mobile games. The idea is to use the phone’s stylus as a joystick. But first, we have to see new Nokia devices with stylus – it’s easier to morph it later on. (via Gizmodo)

May we meet again soon!

Next time you visit feel free to bring your older brother: N95 =P